Multi Room Audio?

North Star

I am finishing the basement at my casa and was considering adding in ceiling speakers and putting audio in the family room, basement, kitchen, and bedroom. Does anybody have any experience setting up a system for this. Pulling the wire won't be too hard nor will the setting of the controls. I am more concerned about getting a good system in the house. Seems like everything I have seen all is geared to home theatre stuff. I don't think it would be too practical to power it off of a shelf system or anything like that. Ideally I would like to hook it in with my digital cable which has 100 music stations in it. Is this even possible?

Teetorbilt

What EXACTLY do you want to do?

Easiest is a single input throughout the home with volume controls in each room, no biggie. You want to listen to Mozart and the kids are into hip-hop, the problem get a little larger.

If you want to go out on the edge. I can set up a system where you wear a small pager and the music and volume will follow you through the house. You can also be the master and when Mozart meets hip-hop, you win!

You seem to want a simple system, just define it a little better.

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North Star

Just a simple system. No need for multi input (no kids and soon to be old lady free as well). I found a multi room distribution module but it seemed really cheap ($80). I have no idea as far as what components (i.e. tuner, cd player, etc..) I am going to need. Ideally I would like to pull the music from my digital cable but I think that may be a bit more than I want to do. I am just not really sure about components on the system.

Teetorbilt

The easiest way is to get a reciever/amp that will accept cable and locate a center. I had one in a utility room and another in that 'useless' space at the top of a linen closet. Only you know where your cable tap is. If you like AM/FM consider an outside antenna. If you like CD's consider access and visibility.

Output is no problem. If you want the entire home at the same level, you can control it from the amp. If you want volume control in individual rooms, preset the amp.

On the amp, get one that will rock the house. Don't cut back here! You have to calculate your total speaker draw at max. and then I multiply by 1.50. It keeps the amp temps down = longevity yet keeps the sound good.

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You can't solve you're problems with the same level of thinking that created the problems.

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Dustball

How does the speaker resistance come into play when there's that many speakers in a whole-house system?

mdshunk

Ditto on the amp. I generally keep an amp about double the size (in watts) of what the speakers will handle. To my ear, amps sound like crap when operated at their limits. If I have speakers capable of 100watts, I want to drive them at 100 watts sometimes and still have it sound good. Using a 100 watt amp will sound crappy. Using a 200 watt amp at 1/2 power will sound sweet.

I've never heard a "whole house" audio system that I felt sounded very good. Quite often, these are mono system. Even with systems set up as stereo in each room, the "sweet spot" is somewhat ambiguous or nonexistant. I prefer to set up a multimedia room or home theater, and branch off a few speakers here and there in the house for places where you just want occasional background music, like on the deck, etc.

Mike Finley

Just run the wire, speakers and volume control, give yourself an input somewhere in the house where you will run the sound into the system at. That's the basics you need, after that you can deal with amps, CD changers and whatever else, first you need the wiring.

When I did mine I ran two input wall outlets to the basement and homerunned everthing from the basement. The stero just plugs into the wall outlets to feed the system to the basement where the multi-channel is set up, from there it goes to the individual rooms to volume controls like Teetor said and from the volume controls to the speakers.

You can really go crazy with this stuff or you can do 5-6 rooms pretty resonably for maybe $1700. That's just decent speakers, volume controls, wires, multi-chanel and outlets.

Teetorbilt

Don't go too overboard on the amp or you will lose your high freq's at lower volumes. 2X is max.

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You can't solve you're problems with the same level of thinking that created the problems.

Albert Einstein

JamesNLA

While I have had too many shotsw of tequila to offer an opinion on a home sys, Hearing RemDawg in full surround sounds great.

And formally for the record, I do HATE the Yankees

Back to the bar...

Teetorbilt

I don't hate them but I do appreciate it when they go home in the spring.

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You can't solve you're problems with the same level of thinking that created the problems.

Albert Einstein

PressurePros

You have to watch your impedance or you will overheat the amp. You can either use high impedance speakers (16 ohm) wired parallel (depending on how many) or use series wiring (on 4 or 8 ohm speakers)to keep the draw constant.

When you are listening to music, even very loudly you are drawing 3-4 watts continuous power. Its the dynamic peaks that draw the high current. In my opinion you can never have too much power for musical peaks. In a whole house wiring system driven with cheap preamplification and junky speakers (anything under $100 per pair) go for lower output wattage from your amplifier and look for lower S/N ratios and better power supply.

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Ken Fenner
Pressure Washing PA
Roof Cleaning Services PA

RobertCDF

Oh man... This is a bad subject for me. As I get to play with pro audio setups all the time. When I do my house there will be conduit in EVERY room run to a central place in the garage or basement. This way at any time I can put whatever I want into whatever room I want. There will also be speakers in every bedroom and bathroom with a volume/device controler. I hope that I can find what I need when I get to that point but it should allow me to access MP3's on the server hooked up to it as well as cd player/tuner/ etc etc.

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Colorado Springs Custom Decks
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vtgaetano

Johhnny Damon throws like a girl, Derek Jeter drinks wine coolers AND A ROD sucks Randys Johnson!

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Chris G

These will allow you to control separate rooms, (not remotely though), while magnifying the impedance for multi speaker setups.

http://www.crutchfield.com/S-jcdxpCC...240&I=190SSVC4

And for anything else controller related, (or anything to do with installation actually), go here. They make good equipment:

http://www.nilesaudio.com

They also sell speakers/amps. But I'm not familiar with them.

Also, remember that a Kenwood 200w amp is not the same as a Harman Kardon 200w amp. Kenwood = messy 200w. HK = Cleeeeeeeean 200w.

greenm&m

We have been installing alot of these

http://us.lge.com/products/model/det...LH-E9674.jhtml

and then you can add on this to have speakers elsewhere with out having to run the wires

http://us.lge.com/products/model/det..._ACC96WK.jhtml

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North Star

Thanks for the heads up on all of this info. I never even considered half of the stuff you guys brought up. I wasn't even considering an amp. Looks like I have some designing to do.

Teetorbilt

How else did you figure on driving all of those speakers? Most reciever/amps can't even handle the outputs that are provided even on short runs.

__________________
You can't solve you're problems with the same level of thinking that created the problems.

Albert Einstein

Luke

Just another thought.....if you use Itunes and want to have the ability to play music from Itunes throughout your house, you can install Apple Airport. It is basically a wireless system that sends the Itunes signal to a receiver at your amplifier. It works great for someone like me who downloads a lot of music plus I imported all of my favorite cd's into the Itunes software. In addition, I can't get my favorite radio stations in my house and using the Itunes software allows me to listen to the radio stations that they carry. I have my house wired to a central stereo with individual room (and outside) volume controls and it is the best improvement I have made to my house. Something to think about if you want to go all the way.....I also recommend a specialist for this type of work. It's not that you can't do it yourself but there are enough little details (resistance/software setup/wireless connections, etc.) to send you down the wrong path if you aren't experienced in these types of systems.

North Star

I didn't figure! There are a whole bunch of things that I understand and can do in this world very well but audio systems just aren't one of them. I have never taken the time to study them and understand them. My working knowledge of any audio equipment ends at the tuner and volume control.

On the flip side of that, I just finished designing a 42 zone irrigation system that is ran by a Toro LTC plus and tied into a Sitepro system that controls the landscape lighting as well.

Chris G

That's funny . I totally forgot to recommend that. It's one of the easiest solutions. I use mine all the time. I can lounge around working on the laptop and control my music at the same time. Coolest $125 you can spend on a sound system. Plus I use it to print stuff. I can be sitting in my backyard, print stuff off, then pick it off the printer whenever I feel like removiing my lazy ass for the chair.

http://www.apple.com/airportexpress/

You need a wireless card in your laptop.